Tuesday, 30 June 2015

Having access to detailed statistics about your account usage makes it way easier to troubleshoot any issues you may have, pinpoint parts of your website that slow it down, or check whether your site is getting popular instead of getting spammed. Until now, our clients could have obtained this information from a few different places, but never on one page organized in a convenient way. We now have deployed on our shared plans a new and more detailed version of our account statistics system for your convenience.

Where to access the new stats?

The detailed account statistics are located in your cPanel – look for the Detailed Stats button in the left column of your cPanel. It will take you to a brand new page that's separated into two tabs. Each one of them provides different type of information about your account and the domain names you have in it.

Account Executions and Scripts Stats

In this tab, you will find information for your entire account no matter how many parked or addon domains you have associated with it. There are two things you can see on this page - a graph that shows your CPU usage and account executions, and the top ten most executed scripts for your account. This tab shows you at a glance which scripts are hit most often for your entire account. For example, if you're reaching the number of hits limitation for that account, it's really easy to see which particular script is causing this - it can be a malfunctioning plugin, theme or something like the WordPress heartbeat issue. Whatever it is - you will be able to troubleshoot it way faster and easier.

Domain Hit Stats

In this tab, the information you receive is grouped by the domain names you have associated with your account. Since especially the higher plans give a lot of resources, and many people are using them to host more than one website, it's very useful to see how each domain is performing. Once you select the domain from the drop-down list (they are sorted by the number of hits they get per month) you will get the following information:

Page URL - a list of the ten most-visited pages on that domain name. This data is a great way to check which parts of your site take most resources.IP Addresses - a list of the IP addresses that have visited your site most often. Useful to see if someone is trying to brute-force your site or spam it.User Agent - what are the most popular user agents that visit your site. Especially convenient to detect and block spam bots.

Friday, 19 June 2015

We’ve cooked up a list of things you need to look out for when deciding on your web host. Remember. picking the right host is like picking a good tailor. There are plenty cheap ones out there, some might actually be half as good but when it comes to your website, you’ve got to account for the right things and take learnt decisions.

There is no substitute for good support: A website has a lot of moving parts. Things could break and it’s at such times that a good host makes all the difference, they’re there when you need them the most.

➠ No Ads Please: Not only are these ads annoying, you can forget about making a mark if you’re going this route. No respectable site has irrelevant ads shoved into them.➠ Local Support: Most hosting companies offer round the clock support these days but it’s a bonus to host with someone from your geography.➠ Respectable Uptime: A 99.99% uptime has become a norm these days but the difference with a good host is that you will get this kinda uptime with them.➠ Ready to grow when you are: This may not apply to everyone but is critical for growing businesses. Small players may offer decent shared hosting solutions but when it comes to scaling you’ll be left high and dry. Pick someone who’ll allow you to scale without any trouble.➠ Check under the hood: Be sure to check the plans in detail. Do they support the apps you want to run? do they offer the infra you need to run your site? What are the limitations, if any? These are the questions you need to ask before you zero in on a web host or a plan.

And so the list goes on but you get the jist. This quick guide sets the stage for things to look out for and the reason behind picking a good hosting provider. If you have additional points to add to list then please do share with us via the comments section below.